That moment when you need a guide..

[KaioShin]

If a JRPG is a mountain

With extremely few exceptions JRPGs are more akin to this:



Hey it's still 2012!

[Garoth Moulinoski]

That actually looks more fun than some of the Japanese RPGs that have come out in recent times... O_o

[InfamousKnight]

Open none of them! That'll show Square-Enix!
(okay, I haven't actually played the game, so I don't know how realistic that is.)

All the treasure in FFXII was utterly useless. It was random so you would have to be lucky to get something. Plus, most of the time they just give you little gil. But still, wouldn't you want to open all the treasure the first time around? And somehow figure out that opening "specific" treasure would ruin that? That's totally unacceptable. I don't think its hard to make good game design, I think they knew what they were doing. They purposely put this shit on you. What were they thinking? Is it hard? There's a difference between "hard" and totally impossible to figure out on your own. I think the person who found that was looking at the source code of the game. That's literally the ONLY way of figuring that out. Then on the other hand, could you imagine how many lines of code FFXII is? Somebody really had no life to take liberty to find that. But then again, how are you supposed to complete the entire game without a guide? I mean get EVERYTHING. You wouldn't just play it over and over and over again experimenting?

[Garoth Moulinoski]

I don't think its hard to make good game design

I disagree. It's hard to make good game design when your vision works well in your head but not in practice. And then, you start trying to work things out so that the design gets as close as to what was in your head as you can without sacrificing too much of your vision. It's possible that something similar happened here [with FFXII].

[MisterJones]

Indeed. Anyone who has worked into proper game design can tell you it is faaaar from trivial. I suggest you trying it.

[InfamousKnight]

I disagree. It's hard to make good game design when your vision works well in your head but not in practice. And then, you start trying to work things out so that the design gets as close as to what was in your head as you can without sacrificing too much of your vision. It's possible that something similar happened here [with FFXII].

You mean like converting imagination to code?

[KingMike]

I think the person who found that was looking at the source code of the game. That's literally the ONLY way of figuring that out.

More likely game developers conspiring with the guide book companies, by creating content that is (practically) exclusive (they reveal these secrets to the guide writers, because nobody's going to figure it out on their own). More sales of (licensed) guide books, more royalties to the game developer.

[MisterJones]

You mean like converting imagination to code?

It's waaay more than just that, it's all about mechanics implementation, cohesion with other mechanics, flow, ergonomy, readability, parametrization, etc.

[Next Gen Cowboy]

Open none of them! That'll show Square-Enix!
(okay, I haven't actually played the game, so I don't know how realistic that is.)

Honestly you could probably get away with it. At least if you knew not to open anything up until about the 60% mark of the game. I like the game a lot, but that was a frustrating feature that I'm glad got fixed.

[Garoth Moulinoski]

You mean like converting imagination to code?

Making a game is so much more than simply writing it into code. So much more. MisterJones mentioned some of it. Most of the time, the person credited with a game is the one who never saw a bit of code but rather the one who put the idea into paper and said "I want it like this!" (and that in itself is much harder than it looks). It varies, though. Read developer and designer interviews and you may start to see the gist of it.

[granz]

Why do you care how other people enjoy a game?  What you call cheapening others might call avoiding tedious hardships or knowing things in advance to fully enjoy the game (i.e. hidden treasure or characters you might never find on your own).

I was thinking he meant the tendency for gamers to rely on guides too heavily directly influences the development / content of games. e.g. Developers might purposefully make a section of the game practically impossible to complete without referring to a guide, because they anticipate their audience will use strategy guides anyway. Of course, this could tie in with marketing. A lot of RPG guides are basically beefed up manuals. The instruction manuals that do come with the games are sometimes very vague about essential areas of game play - you have to consult the official strategy guide to fill in the blanks.

But the text-only thing sometimes makes it really hard to do exactly that; when you have images or even a magazine-style design to the whole thing (mooks, they call 'em in Japan) you can leaf through and let that one part you wanted catch your eye. With text, I sometimes have to try several search terms to find what I'm looking for (never mind that line splits, typos, and the occasional inaccuracy can and does mess even that up), and if the text is too vague to make heads or tails of, oh well.

I sometimes come around to writing my own guides, and I've taken these very issues into consideration. This was my first attempt at writing something that would be easy to reference. I even made it printer-friendly. The actual walkthrough part is divided into a series of bulleted steps to avoid walls of text. (which is my biggest complaint when it comes to text walkthroughs) I bracketed various key words so it would be easier to search for steps related to certain NPCs, places or key items.

I'm thinking I'll try to add some ASCII diagrams in future revisions, to make it easier to locate specific parts of the map. That's about all I could do to address the problem of not having any images.

[BRPXQZME]

ASCII art can be nice when used appropriately (e.g. to demonstrate where a hard-to-find chest is located), but doesn't really help me out that much for visual indexing (which to me has a lot to do with images with colors and all that, as well as the fact that books are nicer for this purpose than a typically-designed web page / document for the same reasons that books are better than scrolls).

In fact, I am the only person I know (in real life) who draws game maps by hand for navigation purposes. MUD habits die hard.

You mean like converting imagination to code?

No, that's just coding

Game design is designing a game. Even non-video games like sports and board games are designed to some extent—rules are set in place (or judiciously not set in place) and those rules often accomplish an important aspect of the game.

[Zoinkity]

Check the bit about Shadowman here:
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?91-Acclaim-project

The Acclaim archives have a few different design examples in them.  It also has the resources used for promotionals and guides, among other things.

I haven't found much cause to sketch out maps lately.  It seems fewer and fewer modern games really require it, and the ones where it would be useful have automappers.  That said, I've penned and repenned maps for old infocom games who knows how many times.  They never seem to stay with the floppies.
Originally did stage clipping for 3-4 GE stages using pen-and-paper reference.  Surprisingly, this was less tedious than the only other alternative at the time.  Basically, that amounts to slicing room telemetry into triads based on use and lighting, which sounds a lot less horrific than it was.  The later samples (Chicago, Car Park) were much better to be honest.

I always thought it would be neat to make an interactive map of, say, Lusternia that doesn't just have the room exits but you could click for the name and description.  Basically, the equivalent of Google Maps.

[DankPanties]

With extremely few exceptions JRPGs are more akin to this:



Hey it's still 2012!

This is a fair point, most JRPGs aren`t Nocturne or Vagrant Story. Which makes the large sales of JRPG strategy guides all the more ridiculous.  You can't say that's just for collectibles, I've seen these guides in stores and they explicitly explain how to fight bosses, navigate dungeons, use the combat system effectively against normal skirmishes, find the best deals when shopping, etc.  So if JRPGs are so easy why do these guides need to contain such information at all?  The mind boggles.

So in the interest of my original point, replace "JPRGs" with "any reasonably difficult game regardless of genre".   

[Zoinkity]

A guide for the original Ogre Battle would have been nice but it isn't game-breaking not having it.  Really, the most useful thing is the reference on the requirements for each of its various endings.

The times I've witnessed people purchasing guides its usually as a collectable reference. 

Those old games guides (like 80's era) were hilarious though.  A whopping 2-4 pages each game, and most of the info was pulled from thin air or not applicable to the release product.

[InfamousKnight]

Alright, so to conclude this thread: JRPGs make you use a guide on purpose. To make more profit that is.. This makes me hate JRPGs. Unless the statement I just said was wrong.

[Bregalad]

Huh ?
I have beaten many JRPGs without using a guide, or at least just at one particular place where I got stuck. Also there is thousands of free guides on gamefaqs.

Castlevania II on the other hand is not a JRPG but...

[InfamousKnight]

Like those times when theres a freakin maze? Having a maze in an RPG with random battles is REALLY annoying.

[BRPXQZME]

Annoying, certainly, but rarely a guide-worthy moment. Just stick close to one side of the walls starting at the entrance and you will find the exit, guaranteed. Take note of any branches you don't visit if you need to explore more thoroughly. If there is more to note than you can remember, write it down.

[Bregalad]

Like those times when theres a freakin maze? Having a maze in an RPG with random battles is REALLY annoying.

The only game like that I can remembers is Star Ocean, which is like this in the ENTIERE game, and got a glaring 9.2 on GameFaqs. Apparently other people enjoy this.